


i think about you (everywhere i go)

by alpacasandravens



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Tattoos, set immediately following Freeze's episodes in season 2, showing his transformation into Mr. Freeze, written for the Fandom Games!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 10:11:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20095585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacasandravens/pseuds/alpacasandravens
Summary: Hugo Strange might have told Victor to forget his past and embrace a new life as Gotham's one and only Mr. Freeze, but Victor can't move on. In an attempt to carry Nora's memory with him, he gets a tattoo before embarking on his new career.





	i think about you (everywhere i go)

**Author's Note:**

> written for the Fandom Games round 3 challenge 23: write about someone in your fandom getting a tattoo. title (slightly modified) from Nobody by Hozier.  
Again, warnings for past attempted suicide and discussed suicidal ideation

Victor opened his eyes, and immediately blinked. Everything around him was white, but not in a way that made the room look sterile or pure - instead, a thin layer of frost had settled over the walls, floor, tables, and metal canisters piled in the corners.

He sat up, noting that though the steel table below him was frozen, it felt pleasantly cool to the touch. He remembered Nora daring him to lick a frozen telephone pole back in their first winter together. His tongue had gotten stuck to it, but the pain had been worth it to hear her laugh. He didn’t stick to the table now. 

Back before she’d gotten sick, Nora had loved the cold.

Victor didn’t know where he was. The last thing he remembered before waking up was fitting the A-14 canister, the one he knew would liquefy him upon defrosting, inside his protective suit and twisting off the cap. The chemicals had frozen him slowly enough that he could feel it - feel his every molecule dying, turning to ice, and that pain hadn’t been as much as he deserved.

He had killed Nora. He’d deserved to die. So he had.

But apparently he hadn’t been able to do that properly either. He’d failed to freeze Nora, and then he’d failed to kill himself. Because this frozen room couldn’t be Hell, and if it was Heaven Nora would be here. Not that he deserved Heaven, not after the countless people he’d killed in pursuit of his research. So he must still be alive. But how?

Hugo Strange explained Victor’s situation to him. How he was frozen and legally dead but still, somehow, alive. He’d suggested Victor treat this as a new beginning - a chance to cast off the trauma and guilt that had made up Victor Fries, and truly embrace the newspapers’ nickname for him: Mr. Freeze. 

When he looked at his reflection in the warped, frozen steel, Victor thought it was good advice. He couldn’t recognize himself anymore. His hair and eyes had been stripped of color, and there was something about his blue-tinted skin (the skin of a corpse, he thought, and God knows he’s seen enough of those) that suggested he’d been stripped of his humanity as well. And yet, somewhere in the back of his brain, he couldn’t let go.

He didn’t want to let go. Because if he did, Nora would be gone. 

She’d been too young to die. They’d promised each other forever at the altar, and forever had only been four years. Not nearly long enough. Nora was the one part of the person who had once been Victor Fries that he would never give up; as he’d watched her face crack and cave in under the weight of the ice, he’d known that he couldn’t survive without her. Even as Mr. Freeze, he could never forget her. He still loved her too much.

Walking in the real world again felt almost alien; after so long trapped in that frozen room in Indian Hill, watched over and experimented on by Strange, seeing the same streets and stores he used to pass every day felt completely new and unfamiliar. Of course, he was different too. Everyone in Gotham cowered before him, scurried out of his way as he passed. Encased in his metal suit, ice fogging up the sides of the visor and crawling up his skin, he might as well have been the alien.

He had business to attend to - research stops for no one, and even if he hadn’t been able to freeze Nora, he had to know. Would he have been able to save her, if she hadn’t switched the formulas? Could he have cured her, or was she right to give up hope? 

But it wasn’t quite time for that yet. 

Victor holstered his freezing gun and stepped inside a small, out of the way tattoo parlor. The proprietor grabbed for a gun from under the counter (this was Gotham, after all), and Victor held up his hands.

“I made an appointment,” he said. And he had. He’d just neglected to mention his … condition. Or his criminal notoriety.

Normally, Victor wouldn’t have been one for tattoos. He’d watched in college as some of his and Nora’s friends had tattooed stupid things onto themselves and later regretted it - names of significant others they’d only just met, Chinese characters that turned out to not translate the way they’d thought, and on one memorable occasion, a rather large skull and crossbones tramp stamp. He’d always shook his head and judged them for their poor judgement. 

He knew he wasn’t going to regret this. 

Nora was the most important thing in his life, even if she was gone. He wanted to remember her forever, and though he knew he could never forget her, he wanted a physical reminder as well.  
If the circumstances had been different, he might have chosen a different location. As it was, with the suit the only thing that stood between him and dying of heatstroke in a 65-degree room, he detached his glove. 

The alcohol wipe froze when it touched his wrist. His skin stung at its warmth.

“Are you sure -” The artist began to say.

“Yes.” Victor glared at him. “Continue.”

Back in college, when his friends had gotten those tattoos, they’d pretended the needles didn’t hurt. Everyone knew they were lying, but that false bravado had been an important part of the ritual.   
The needles didn’t hurt Victor.

Or, they did, but not for the fact that they stabbed his flesh countless times. His arm was so numb he barely felt the punctures. It was the temperature difference that hurt him. His wrist felt like it was melting, boiling, just by being in contact with something not encrusted in ice. 

As the process went on, the needles had to be wiped clear of frost time and again. But by the time the artist was finished, Victor’s wrist was almost the color of living flesh, and it bore a small snowflake (the same as the charm on the necklace she’d died in) above her name in curling script. Nora. 

Victor rubbed his opposite thumb over the spot, and the ice crept back in to reclaim it. The black ink stood out starkly against his pale blue skin. He fitted his glove back on before leaving.   
Hidden under that suit, no one else would ever see it. They never needed to. Victor had done this for himself, and for her. The woman he loved.

The woman he’d killed.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, drop kudos/a comment below or come shout about Gotham with me on tumblr @alpacasandravens !!


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